Of Rochester and RakesOn this day in 1647 John Wilmot, perhaps the most notorious of the Restoration rakes, was born. By poem and play, song and satire, maid and monkey -- some say he trained his pet monkey to excrete upon his guests, others say he merely encouraged it -- the 2nd Earl of Rochester became the talk of town and Court. If, as Samuel Johnson said, he "blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness," he also wrote, said Hazlitt, verses that "cut and sparkle like diamonds."

Druidic.orgFind a short biography and selected love and satirical poetry.

"Rochester's own writings were at once admired and infamous. Posthumous printings of his play Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery gave rise to prosecutions for obscenity, and were destroyed. During his lifetime, his songs and satires were known mainly from anonymous broadsheets and manuscript circulation; most of Rochester's poetry was not published under his name until after his death."

"Hobbes' Leviathan ... is often pointed to as a major influence on Rochester, and with good reason. Anthony Ã Wood wrote that 'the Court...not only debauched him but made him a perfect Hobbist.' ... Hobbes' Leviathan was one of the most significant books of its time (Hobbes himself had been a tutor to Charles II). However, several of Rochester's poems point strongly to Hobbes as an influence, in particular, 'Love and Life,' whose second stanza is derived from Hobbes' writings."

Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English PoetsFind excerpts from Johnson's work on John Wilmot, and selected poems including "Satyr," "Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope: An Epistolary Essay," "An Allusion to Horace," and "Upon Nothing." With links to other online resources.

"In all his works there is sprightliness and vigour, and every where may be found tokens of a mind which study might have carried to excellence; what more can be expected from a life spent in ostentatious contempt of regularity, and ended before the abilities of many other men began to be displayed?"-- Dr. Samuel Johnson